If I hadn’t decided, on a whim, to call an old friend of mine on Monday, I would never have heard about this.
“Did you have a look at the town hall meeting on health care that President Obama had over the weekend in Colorado?” he asked me.
“No, I hadn’t seen that,” I said. “No cable here. Or sat-dish. So what happened?”
“Well, this young college kid got up got up and asked Obama, directly, to have an Oxford-style debate on health care.”
“Really.”
“Yes.”
“Did he, now.”
“He did.”
“Well, I’m going to have to track down this young, brave fellow.” And so I did. No cable or sat-dish here, yes, but we now have YouTube capability at HVDU HQ, and — well, there it was.
The young fellow’s name is Zach Lahn. I thought it was spelled “Lane,” which is how it is pronounced. There were no “Zach Lane”s in the U of Colorado student directory, so that put me off the scent for a while.
Then this article came to my attention, and I was back on the scent again.
The young fellow studying at Boulder just put Oxford debating on the map, and he went right to the top of the pay grade in the middle of the Rocky Mountains:
The young man knows how to put a question. I’ll bet he’s fairly handy at a Point of Information too.
Zach is also a dab hand at handling CNN megastars:
And he was a bit more relaxed on Fox News:
And then Contessa Brewer of MSNBC almost goes postal on Zach at the end:
And the young fellow from Grand Junction (and from Sioux City, Iowa) also got noticed by ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper.
Zach says that he’s “still waiting for an Oxford-style health care debate.” As of right now, the most likely place in these United States for him to have such an event is — your very own Hudson Valley Debate Union.
I think I’m going to have to work on that. Hmmmmmmmm.
